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Lil Yachty Announces The Field Trip Tour ‘23

QC ARTIST WILL SUPPORT HIS HIGHLY ACCLAIMED ALBUM LET’S START HERE. FOR 39 STOPS ACROSS THE GLOBE

For approved artist images and hi-res tour art, please download  here..

Lil Yachty  has announced a  39 stop global tour  in support of his most recent and highly acclaimed album  Let’s Start Here.  (Quality Control Music/Motown Records)  which was released in January of 2023 to much critical acclaim. Produced by  Live Nation  and  Bose ,  The Field Trip Tour  is set to kickoff Thursday, September 21st in Washington, DC at Echostage with stops across North America and Europe including New York, Toronto, Nashville, Oslo, Berlin, London and more before wrapping up on Sunday, December 17th in Vienna, Austria at Gasometer.

Artist pre sale will start Tuesday May 9th at 10 AM local time in North America and on Tuesday May 9th at 1pm BST in Europe. Additional pre sales will run throughout the week with general onsale starting Friday, May 12th at 10 AM local time in North America and on Friday, May 12th at 12pm local time in Europe. For more information and ticket purchasing please visit: fieldtriptour.com.

This tour announcement comes a month after Lil Yachty released the music video for his highly anticipated single  “Strike (Holster)” . Yachty started 2023 on a high note after his monumental psychedelic alternative rock album  Let’s Start Here.  received critical acclaim from both the press and his musical peers alike garnering him a cover on  Billboard  along with his musical guest debut performance on  Saturday Night Live (SNL)  where Yachty performed  “the BLACK seminole”  and  “drive ME crazy!”  with a live band.

THE FIELD TRIP TOUR ‘23 NORTH AMERICA DATES:

fieldtriptour.com

Thu Sep 21 — Washington, DC — Echostage Fri Sep 22 — New York, NY — SummerStage in Central Park Sun Sep 24 — Philadelphia, PA — The Fillmore Mon Sep 25 — Raleigh, NC — The Ritz Wed Sep 27 — Montreal, QC — MTELUS Fri Sep 29 — Wallingford, CT — The Dome at Oakdale Sun Oct 01 — Pittsburgh, PA — Roxian Theatre Mon Oct 02 — Toronto, ON — HISTORY Wed Oct 04 — Charlotte, NC — The Fillmore Charlotte

Sun Oct 08 — Indianapolis, IN — Egyptian Room at Old National Centre Mon Oct 09 — Nashville, TN — Marathon Music Works Wed Oct 11 — New Orleans, LA — The Fillmore Sun Oct 15 — Tempe, AZ — Marquee Theatre

Tue Oct 17 — San Diego, CA — SOMA Sat Oct 21 — Vancouver, BC — UBC – Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre Sun Oct 22 — Portland, OR — McMenamins Crystal Ballroom Thu Oct 26 — Las Vegas, NV — Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas Fri Oct 27 — Salt Lake City, UT — The Complex Sun Oct 29 — Denver, CO — Fillmore Auditorium Tue Oct 31 — St. Louis, MO — The Pageant Thu Nov 02 — Minneapolis, MN — Fillmore Sat Nov 04 — Madison, WI — The Sylvee Sun Nov 05 — Detroit, MI — The Fillmore

THE FIELD TRIP TOUR ‘23 EUROPE DATES:  Wed Nov 22 — Oslo, Norway — Sentrum Scene Fri Nov 24 — Stockholm, Sweden — Fryhuset Sat Nov 25 — Copenhagen, Denmark — KB Hallen

Mon Nov 27 — Berlin, Germany — Columbiahalle Tue Nov 28 — Cologne, Germany — Palladium Thu Nov 30 — Manchester, UK — O2 Victoria Warehouse Fri Dec 01 — London, UK — OVO Wembley Arena Sun Dec 03 — Glasgow, UK — O2 Academy Mon Dec 04 — Birmingham, UK — O2 Academy Wed Dec 06 — Paris, France — Salle Pleyel Fri Dec 08 — Tilburg, Netherlands — Poppodium013 Sun Dec 10 — Brussels, Belgium — Ancienne Belgique Tue Dec 12 — Barcelona, Spain — Razzmatazz Thu Dec 14 — Milan, Italy — Fabrique Sat Dec 16 — Zurich, Switzerland — Komplex 457 Sun Dec 17 — Vienna, Austria — Gasometer

Follow Lil Yachty: Website  |  Facebook  |  Twitter  |  Instagram  |  YouTube

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Lil Yachty Announces Dates For Fall 2023 Field Trip Global Tour

Rapper will kick off the 39-date outing on Sept. 21 in Washington, D.C.

By Gil Kaufman

Gil Kaufman

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Lil Yachty announced the dates for his fall 2023 The Field Trip tour on Tuesday morning (May 9). The 39-date global tour is slated to kick off on Sept. 21 with a show at the Echostage in Washington, D.C. and make its way across North America with stops in New York, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Toronto, Indianapolis, Nashville, San Diego, Las Vegas, Denver and Minneapolis before winding down on Nov. 5 at the Fillmore in Detroit.

Lil Yachty On His Big Rock Pivot: ‘F-ck Any of the Albums I Dropped Before This One…

Trending on billboard.

Check out the dates for Yachty’s Field Trip Tour below.

Sept. 21 — Washington, DC @ Echostage

Sept. 22 — New York, NY @ SummerStage in Central Park

Sept. 24 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore  

Sept. 25 — Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz

Sept. 27 — Montreal, QC @ MTELUS

Sept. 29 — Wallingford, CT @ The Dome at Oakdale

Oct. 1 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Roxian Theatre

Oct. 2 — Toronto, ON @ HISTORY

Oct. 4 — Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore Charlotte

Oct. 8 — Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room at Old National Centre

Oct. 9 — Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works

Oct. 11 — New Orleans, LA @ The Fillmore  

Oct. 15 — Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre

Oct. 17 — San Diego, CA @ SOMA

Oct. 21 — Vancouver, BC @ UBC – Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre

Oct. 22 — Portland, OR @ McMenamins Crystal Ballroom

Oct. 26 — Las Vegas, NV @ Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas

Oct. 27 — Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex

Oct. 29 — Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium

Oct. 31 — St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant

Nov. 4 — Madison, WI @ The Sylvee

Nov. 5 — Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore

European Dates

Nov. 22 — Oslo, Norway @ Sentrum Scene

Nov. 24 — Stockholm, Sweden @ Fryhuset

Nov. 25 — Copenhagen, Denmark @ KB Hallen

Nov. 27 — Berlin, Germany @ Columbiahalle

Nov. 28 — Cologne, Germany @ Palladium

Nov. 30 — Manchester, UK @ O2 Victoria Warehouse

Dec. 1 — London, UK @ OVO Wembley Arena

Dec. 3 — Glasgow, UK @ O2 Academy

Dec. 4 — Birmingham, UK @ O2 Academy

Dec. 6 — Paris, France @ Salle Pleyel

Dec. 8 — Tilburg, Netherlands @ Poppodium013

Dec. 10 — Brussels, Belgium @ Ancienne Belgique

Dec. 12 — Barcelona, Spain @ Razzmatazz

Dec. 14 — Milan, Italy @ Fabrique

Dec. 16 — Zurich, Switzerland @ Komplex 457

Dec. 17 — Vienna, Austria @ Gasometer

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Lil Yachty To Hit The Road For Huge Field Trip World Tour

Lil Yachty has announced The Field Trip World Tour, which will take him across the globe this fall.

Lil Boat revealed plans for the international trek on Tuesday (May 9), which comes in support of his psychedelic rock album Let’s Start Here that arrived in January.

The 25-year-old will kick off the tour on September 21 in Washington, D.C., and then make stops across the country in New York City, Philadelphia, Charlotte, Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, San Diego and Denver, before wrapping things up on November 5 in Detroit.

Lil Boat then travels across the pond with dates in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Germany, the U.K., France, Spain, Italy and more. The tour finally comes to a close in Austria on December 17.

Pre-sale tickets are already available via Ticketmaster , with the general public having their shot on Friday (May 12).

Yachty’s psych-rock pivot was met with both criticism and acclaim as Let’s Start Here debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 with 36,000 album-equivalent units sold in the first week.

The Roots’ Questlove was among those who heaped high praise on the project, writing in a flattering Instagram post: “I had to let 24 hours go by just so I could process this. Then I hesitated cause I didn’t wanna use hyperbole to naturally give the trolls ammo to hate it or to further evidence sort why my co-signs are whack.”

He continued: “I dunno man: after about 3 listens (and I thought I’d NEVER say this—-& not because ‘I didn’t expect this from Lil Yachty’——but just in general I didn’t expect this from MUSIC). How should I put it? I really really really really love this @lilyachty record and I love when artists pull off a good departure record.”

However, Yachty wasn’t too pleased when Pitchfork gave the album a 6.0 out of 10 in a less-than-favorable review. He fired back on Twitter by calling the publication “washed up.”

related news

April 29, 2023

The Georgia native later made his Saturday Night Live debut in April , where he performed album cuts “drive ME crazy!” and “the BLACK seminole” during his visit to NBC’s famous 30 Rockefeller Plaza studio in New York.

He also unleashed his latest single “Strike (Holster)” on April 7, which boasts over 15 million streams on Spotify in the month since its arrival.

Check out the full dates for The Field Trip World Tour below:

North American leg:

Sep 21 — Washington, DC — Echostage

Sep 22 — New York, NY — SummerStage in Central Park

Sep 24 — Philadelphia, PA — The Fillmore

Sep 25 — Raleigh, NC — The Ritz

Sep 27 — Montreal, QC — MTELUS

Sep 29 — Wallingford, CT — The Dome at Oakdale

Oct 01 — Pittsburgh, PA — Roxian Theatre

Oct 02 — Toronto, ON — HISTORY

Oct 04 — Charlotte, NC — The Fillmore Charlotte

Oct 08 — Indianapolis, IN — Egyptian Room at Old National Centre

Oct 09 — Nashville, TN — Marathon Music Works

Oct 11 — New Orleans, LA — The Fillmore

Oct 15 — Tempe, AZ — Marquee Theatre

Oct 17 — San Diego, CA — SOMA

Oct 21 — Vancouver, BC — UBC – Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre

Oct 22 — Portland, OR — McMenamins Crystal Ballroom

Oct 26 — Las Vegas, NV — Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas

Oct 27 — Salt Lake City, UT — The Complex

Oct 29 — Denver, CO — Fillmore Auditorium

Oct 31 — St. Louis, MO — The Pageant

Nov 02 — Minneapolis, MN — Fillmore

Nov 04 — Madison, WI — The Sylvee

Nov 05 — Detroit, MI — The Fillmore

European leg:

Nov 22 — Oslo, Norway — Sentrum Scene

Nov 24 — Stockholm, Sweden — Fryhuset

Nov 25 — Copenhagen, Denmark — KB Hallen

Nov 27 — Berlin, Germany — Columbiahalle

Nov 28 — Cologne, Germany — Palladium

Nov 30 — Manchester, UK — O2 Victoria Warehouse

Dec 01 — London, UK — OVO Wembley Arena

Dec 03 — Glasgow, UK — O2 Academy

Dec 04 — Birmingham, UK — O2 Academy

Dec 06 — Paris, France — Salle Pleyel

Dec 08 — Tilburg, Netherlands — Poppodium013

Dec 10 — Brussels, Belgium — Ancienne Belgique

Dec 12 — Barcelona, Spain — Razzmatazz

Dec 14 — Milan, Italy — Fabrique

Dec 16 — Zurich, Switzerland — Komplex 457

Dec 17 — Vienna, Austria — Gasometer

In this article

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Lil Yachty tour dates 2024

Lil Yachty is currently touring across 3 countries and has 7 upcoming concerts.

Their next tour date is at Audi Field in Washington, after that they'll be at Herdade da Casa Branca in Zambujeira do Mar.

Currently touring across

• 🇵🇹 Portugal

Upcoming concerts (7) See nearest concert

Broccoli City Festival

Sudoeste Festival

Bryce Jordan Center

Cross Insurance Center

Outer Harbor Live

Past concerts

American Family Insurance Amphitheater, Henry Maier Festival Park

The Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash - Sunday

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Recent tour reviews

The concert was wild especially in NYC perfect Venue. A lot of mosh pits coming from a lil yachty concert. During his performance he brings out A$AP Rocky and A$AP Ferg, very unexpected.

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One of the best shows I have seen. He was so full of life, fun to watch, funny and made it a memorable night. The lights, dancing and song choice was spot on. I hope he comes to Baltimore again so I can go back. LIL BOAT!

It was bananas im glad i went i met so many cool ppl YACHTY was phenomenal the venve was huge good air i had funn i hope he comes back next year i will definitely be going

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Lil Yachty Schedules ‘The Field Trip’ North American Tour for Fall 2023

By Larisha Paul

Larisha Paul

Let’s Start Here , the latest studio album from Lil Yachty , will get the proper live treatment on the rapper’s newly announced The Field Trip tour . Kicking off later this year, the 39-date world tour will include 23 stops in North America.

The Field Trip tour will begin on September 21 in Washington D.C. and conclude its North American leg on November 5 in Detroit. Lil Yachty will also make stops in New York, Philadelphia, Montreal, Toronto, Charlotte, New Orleans, San Diego, Portland, Salt Lake City, Minneapolis, and more.

General sale for the tour will launch on Friday, May 12 at 10 a.m. local time.

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Lil Yachty 2023 North American Tour Dates Sept. 21 — Washington, D.C. @ Echostage Sept. 22 — New York, NY @ SummerStage in Central Park Sept. 24 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore Sept. 25 — Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz Sept. 27 — Montreal, QC @ MTELUS Sept. 29 — Wallingford, CT @ The Dome at Oakdale Oct. 1 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Roxian Theatre Oct. 2 — Toronto, ON @ HISTORY Oct. 4 — Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore Charlotte Oct. 8 — Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room at Old National Centre Oct. 9 — Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works Oct. 11 — New Orleans, LA @ The Fillmore Oct. 15 — Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre Oct. 17 — San Diego, CA @ SOMA Oct. 21 — Vancouver, BC @ UBC – Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre Oct. 22 — Portland, OR @ McMenamins Crystal Ballroom Oct. 26 — Las Vegas, NV @ Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas Oct. 27 — Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex Oct. 29 — Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium Oct. 31 — St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant Nov. 2 — Minneapolis, MN @ Fillmore Nov. 4 — Madison, WI @ The Sylvee Nov. 5 — Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore

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Let’s Start Here.

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Lil Yachty ‘Field Trip’ Tour Dates Announced

(Photo by Prince Williams/Wireimage)

Lil Yachty is making a global expedition to celebrate his January-released album Let’s Start Here , which received critical acclaim.

On Tuesday (May 9), the Atlanta rapper announced the Field Trip Tour, scheduled to make 39 stops in North America and Europe. Beginning on September 21 in Washington D.C., the tour will embark on its North American leg with stops in New York, Las Vegas, St. Louis, Minneapolis and Philadelphia before starting the European portion in Oslo on November 22.

Live Nation and Bose produce the Field Trip Tour. Pre-sale tickets for the North American leg of it are available now. General sales are slated to launch on May 12 at 10 a.m. EST. More information is available here .

Questlove Is A Big Fan Of Lil Yachty’s ‘Let’s Start Here’ Album, Here’s Why

Here’s Why Questlove Is A Big Fan Of Lil Yachty’s ‘Let’s Start Here’ Album

Let’s Start Here was a musical shift for Yachty as it had him creating in a more alternative lane rather than his traditional hip-hop one. Released on January 27, it’s so far been considered one of the best album releases of the year.

See the full tour schedule below via Lil Yachty’s Instagram.

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Here Is Lil Yachty’s ‘The Field Trip Tour’ Setlist

This fall, Lil Yachty is bringing his fans along on one hell of a field trip. His Field Trip Tour kicked off last night in Washington, DC, giving us a look at what to expect for the coming 38 dates. With tour openers Nick Hakim, Jean Dawson, and Nala Sinephro in tow, Yachty is bringing songs from across his discography — from his breakout mixtape track “Minnesota” to his sprawling indie rock experiment Let’s Start Here — to dates across North America and Europe until mid-December (and even a Phil Collins cover!). You can check out the setlist ( courtesy of setlist.fm ) and remaining tour dates below.

01. “Drive Me Crazy!” 02. “The Ride-” 03. “Pretty” 04. “Should I B?” 05. “Say Something” 06. “In The Air Tonight” (Phil Collins Cover)

07. “Solo Steppin Crete Boy” 08. “Slide” 09. “Split / Whole Time” 10. “Split” 11. “Get Dripped” 12. “Yacht Club” 13. “Nbayoungboat” 14. “Flex Up” 15. “Coffin” 16. “From The D To The A” 17. “Minnesota” 18. “Broccoli” 19. “iSpy” 20. “Tesla” 21. “Strike (Holster)” 22. “One Night”

23. “Ive Officially Lost Vision!!!!” 24. “The Zone~” 25. “We Saw The Sun!” 26. “The Black Seminole.”

09/22 — New York, NY @ SummerStage in Central Park 09/24 — Philadelphia, PA @ The Fillmore 09/25 — Raleigh, NC @ The Ritz 09/27 — Montreal, QC @ MTELUS 09/29 — Wallingford, CT @ The Dome at Oakdale 10/01 — Pittsburgh, PA @ Roxian Theatre 10/02 — Toronto, ON @ HISTORY 10/04 — Charlotte, NC @ The Fillmore Charlotte 10/08 — Indianapolis, IN @ Egyptian Room at Old National Centre 10/09 — Nashville, TN @ Marathon Music Works 10/11 — New Orleans, LA @ The Fillmore 10/15 — Tempe, AZ @ Marquee Theatre 10/17 — San Diego, CA @ SOMA 10/21 — Vancouver, BC @ UBC – Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre 10/22 — Portland, OR @ McMenamins Crystal Ballroom 10/26 — Las Vegas, NV @ Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas 10/27 — Salt Lake City, UT @ The Complex 10/29 — Denver, CO @ Fillmore Auditorium 10/31 — St. Louis, MO @ The Pageant 11/02 — Minneapolis, MN @ Fillmore 11/04 — Madison, WI @ The Sylvee 11/05 — Detroit, MI @ The Fillmore 11/22 — Oslo, NO @ Sentrum Scene 11/24 — Stockholm, SE @ Fryhuset 11/25 — Copenhagen, DK @ KB Hallen 11/27 — Berlin, DE @ Columbiahalle 11/28 — Cologne, DE @ Palladium 11/30 — Manchester, UK @ O2 Victoria Warehouse 12/01 — London, UK @ OVO Wembley Arena 12/03 — Glasgow, UK @ O2 Academy 12/04 — Birmingham, UK @ O2 Academy 12/06 — Paris, FR @ Salle Pleyel 12/08 — Tilburg, NL @ Poppodium013 12/10 — Brussels, BE @ Ancienne Belgique 12/12 — Barcelona, ES @ Razzmatazz 12/14 — Milan, IT @ Fabrique 12/16 — Zurich, CH @ Komplex 457 12/17 — Vienna, AT @ Gasometer

Back in May, Lil Yachty announced “ The Field Trip Tour ,” which will bring him to cities in both North America and Europe this fall. Today (July 26), he revealed that three additional dates have been added for Boston, Chicago, and his hometown of Atlanta, further making the forthcoming excursion available to his fans in the United States.

In an interview for REVOLT’s “Tour Tales” series , DJ KieroLovesYou opened up about Yachty’s energetic stage act. “Yachty is a mosh pit show. He doesn’t want you to turn down,” he shared. “You’re going to sing along. When I was on his ‘Teenage Tour’ [in 2017], he was also switching some of his stuff by doing slower and more melodic songs live.”

He continued, “He has a song with Carnage called ‘Mase In ’97.’ Every time he did that song, he would throw fruit snacks, chips, and all of the stuff in the green room into the crowd and tell them, ‘When this beat drops, everybody start throwing this s**t.’ They would have to cover equipment and get ready for this because it would look like a school lunch fight.”

Back in January, Yachty blessed the masses with his fifth studio LP, Let’s Start Here. , a deep dive into psychedelic rock and other experimental genres. The project consisted of 14 cuts with contributions from Diana Gordon, Teezo Touchdown, Justine Skye, Fousheé, Ant Clemons, Daniel Caesar, Nick Hakim, and more. The critically acclaimed effort debuted at No. 9 on the Billboard 200 with 36,000 album-equivalent units sold. It also topped Billboard ‘s Top Alternative Albums and Top Rock Albums charts. Check out the updated schedule for “The Field Trip Tour” below.

“The Field Trip Tour” North America dates:

Sept. 21: Washington, DC — Echostage

Sept. 22: New York, NY — SummerStage in Central Park

Sept. 24: Philadelphia, PA — The Fillmore

Sept. 25: Raleigh, NC — The Ritz

Sept. 27: Montreal, QC — MTELUS

Sept. 29: Wallingford, CT — The Dome at Oakdale

Sept. 30: Boston, MA — House of Blues

Oct. 1: Pittsburgh, PA — Roxian Theatre

Oct. 2: Toronto, ON — HISTORY

Oct. 4: Charlotte, NC — The Fillmore Charlotte

Oct. 8: Indianapolis, IN — Egyptian Room at Old National Centre

Oct. 9: Nashville, TN — Marathon Music Works

Oct. 11: New Orleans, LA — The Fillmore

Oct. 15: Tempe, AZ — Marquee Theatre

Oct. 17: San Diego, CA — SOMA

Oct. 21: Vancouver, BC — UBC – Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre

Oct. 22: Portland, OR — McMenamins Crystal Ballroom

Oct. 26: Las Vegas, NV — Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas

Oct. 27: Salt Lake City, UT — The Complex

Oct. 29: Denver, CO — Fillmore Auditorium

Oct. 31: St. Louis, MO — The Pageant

Nov. 2: Minneapolis, MN — Fillmore

Nov. 3: Chicago, IL — Byline Bank Aragon Ballroom

Nov. 4: Madison, WI — The Sylvee

Nov. 5: Detroit , MI — The Fillmore

Nov. 8: Atlanta, GA — Coca-Cola Roxy

“The Field Trip Tour” Europe dates:

Nov. 22: Oslo, Norway — Sentrum Scene

Nov. 24: Stockholm, Sweden — Fryhuset

Nov. 25: Copenhagen, Denmark — KB Hallen

Nov. 27: Berlin, Germany — Columbiahalle

Nov. 28: Cologne, Germany — Palladium

Nov. 30: Manchester, UK — O2 Victoria Warehouse

Dec. 1: London, UK — OVO Wembley Arena

Dec. 3: Glasgow, UK — O2 Academy

Dec. 4: Birmingham, UK — O2 Academy

Dec. 6: Paris, France — Salle Pleyel

Dec. 8: Tilburg, Netherlands — Poppodium 013

Dec. 10: Brussels, Belgium — Ancienne Belgique

Dec. 12: Barcelona, Spain — Razzmatazz

Dec. 14: Milan, Italy — Fabrique

Dec. 16: Zurich, Switzerland — Komplex 457

Dec. 17: Vienna, Austria — Gasometer

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Lil Yachty announces “The Field Trip” tour

Yachty will play a raft of dates in support of his latest album, let’s start here ..

Lil Yachty has announced a North American tour in support of his 2023 album Let’s Start Here . "The Field Trip" tour is set to begin on September 21 in Washington, DC at Echostage with further stops including New York, Toronto and Nashville. A European leg will follow later in the year.

Tickets for "The Field Trip" tour will be available via a pre-sale from 10 a.m. local time today (May 9) with general tickets going on sale at the same time on Friday, May 12. For more information visit fieldtriptour.com.

Read Next: Lil Yachty flirts with harsh noise on “Something Ether”

Yachty dropped the psych rock-inspired Let's Start Here in January and began performing songs from it with a live band at Rolling Loud Cali . In April he returned to his rap roots on new song "Strike (Holster)."

Lil Yachty dates:

September 21 - Washington, DC - Echostage September 22 - New York, NY - SummerStage in Central Park September 24 - Philadelphia, PA - The Fillmore September 25 - Raleigh, NC - The Ritz September 27 - Montreal, QC - MTELUS September 29 - Wallingford, CT - The Dome at Oakdale

October 1 - Pittsburgh, PA - Roxian Theatre October 2 - Toronto, ON - HISTORY October 4 - Charlotte, NC - The Fillmore Charlotte October 8 - Indianapolis, IN - Egyptian Room at Old National Centre October 9 - Nashville, TN - Marathon Music Works October 11 - New Orleans, LA - The Fillmore October 15 - Tempe, AZ - Marquee Theatre October 17 - San Diego, CA - SOMA October 21 - Vancouver, BC - UBC - Doug Mitchell Thunderbird Sports Centre October 22 - Portland, OR - McMenamins Crystal Ballroom October 26 - Las Vegas, NV - Brooklyn Bowl Las Vegas October 27 - Salt Lake City, UT - The Complex October 29 - Denver, CO - Fillmore Auditorium October 31 - St. Louis, MO - The Pageant

November 2 - Minneapolis, MN - Fillmore November 4 - Madison, WI - The Sylvee November 5 - Detroit, MI - The Fillmore

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Lil Yachty shares new song “A Cold Sunday”

Lil Yachty Tour History

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Lil Yachty Concert Setlists & Tour Dates

The field trip tour, upcoming shows.

• Date and Venue Doors Scheduled
• Jul 27 2024 Broccoli City Festival 2024 Washington, DC, USA  –  Find tickets Add time Tickets Add time Add times
• Aug 11 2024 BLUDFEST 2024 Milton Keynes, England  –  Find tickets Add time Tickets Add time Add times
• Aug 17 2024 SUMMER SONIC 2024 Tokyo Chiba, Japan Add time  –  Scheduled: 8:10 PM Add time Add times 8:10 PM
• Aug 18 2024 SUMMER SONIC 2024 Osaka Suita, Japan Add time  –  Scheduled: 7:50 PM Add time Add times 7:50 PM
• Sep 06 2024 Bryce Jordan Center University Park, PA, USA  –  Find tickets Add time Tickets Add time Add times

Lil Yachty at Summerfest 2024

• drive ME crazy!
• A Cold Sunday
• SOLO STEPPIN CRETE BOY
• Split / Whole Time
• Get Dripped
• NBAYOUNGBOAT
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Lil Yachty at Lyrical Lemonade Summer Smash 2024

• Gimme da Lite
• Figure it Out

Lil Yachty at Terminal B at the Outer Harbor, Buffalo, NY, USA

Lil yachty at sentrum scene, oslo, norway, lil yachty at klubben/fryshuset, stockholm, sweden, lil yachty at columbiahalle, berlin, germany.

• The Alchemist.
• sHouLd i B?
• sAy sOMETHINg
• In the Air Tonight

Lil Yachty at Poppodium 013, Tilburg, Netherlands

Lil yachty at ancienne belgique, brussels, belgium.

• the BLACK seminole.

Lil Yachty at Salle Pleyel, Paris, France

• The Alchemist. / sHouLd i B?

Lil Yachty at Raiffeisen Halle im Gasometer, Vienna, Austria

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• Minnesota ( 85 )
• Broccoli ( 84 )
• One Night ( 84 )
• iSpy ( 76 )
• Yacht Club ( 63 )

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A$AP Mob A$AP Rocky Concrete Boys Cardi B J. Cole Dc2trill Draft Day F1LTHY DJ Fresh grandson Gucci Mane JID Kenny Beats Kodak Black Lil Baby Lil Pump Lute Migos Playboi Carti Trippie Redd Oliver Tree Ugly God Tierra Whack Young Multi Young Thug

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10k.Caash 21 Savage a‐ha Babyface Ray Concrete Boys Burberry Perry Carnage Chance the Rapper Chief Keef City Girls Phil Collins Quality Control Mac DeMarco Drake Drake & 21 Savage DRAM ian Icewear Vezzo Kai Cenat KARRAHBOOO KYLE Lil Baby Lil Yachty & J. Cole Lyrical Lemonade Migos Nemzzz Offset OutKast Peezy Playboi Carti Q Lazzarus Remble Rio da Yung OG Sada Baby DJ Scheme Travis Scott Kodie Shane Ski Mask the Slump God Social House Southside & Lil Yachty Tame Impala Tee Grizzley XXXTENTACION Ye

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537 people have seen Lil Yachty live.

MajinBruv mikeynumberdos aliviaoldenburg FastKirn cass_oneil Bloodtsunami7 Scorin cntpds wherethericksat dubj Shu1upadam Bennyjb2 jmn0205 sxilxr MathiasBridfelt 9joycv shanks32 merlijnthunders forallthedogs natnek peter319 Koberik pootjelap Adloune AV756sism Usubame campercz filippobertoli karimsabet MrYggdrasil hwilliams7902 Eethon Pat12345 DavFlan jessicar22 Jamieb1688 camreid42 zsim cheesydave Reubump Rich55555 Scrawnynag9071 Omega4269 jrlinton05 rossiihall GabrielPicco bram14 5eraph_0 efaragacci sammywood

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Lil Yachty Announces European Tour

Lil Yachty's debut album Teenage Emotions is still in the works, but the Atlanta MC is already prepared to set sail to Europe for a tour.

The 2016 XXL Freshman revealed the news on Friday (Jan. 27), posting an ad for the tour on his Instagram page. "Sailing To Europe 👵🏾👵🏾👵🏾👵🏾👵🏾👵🏾👵🏾👵🏾 Get your tickets if they not sold out in your city already," he captioned the pic.

Starting on Feb. 24, the tour will make nine stops in major cities like London, Amsterdam, Paris and Brussels, before closing out on March 5 in Stockholm, Sweden.

Earlier this month, Boat revealed the name of his debut album during an interview with MTV. He also revealed that he hopes the project will give him more credibility in the eyes of his naysayers. “My fans are so loyal and dedicated that I don’t care that much about winning people over, but I know it’s gonna change and people will eventually give my shit a chance, bro,” he said. “That’s why I’m working so hard on this album, not to please other people but I’m just really trying, bro, to show people that like, I’m not just fucking bad!”

Earlier this week, Yachty updated fans, saying the album is close to being finished. "It's coming I promise, I just want it to be really fire first. Almost. Like 79% done," he tweeted. No official release date has been provided for the project.

Peep the full list of tour dates above.

Go Behind the Scenes With Lil Yachty at 2016 XXL Freshman Cover Shoot

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Overmono Is Transcending the Underground

Amid the summer festival circuit and ahead of a solo tour comprising their biggest shows to date, the russell brothers break down their fluid approach to process and production..

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After a decade of making music as Overmono , brothers Tom and Ed Russell may have struck dance music renown, but after those long nights (and early mornings) spent playing raves, they still prefer a quieter way of life. In 2023, the DJ duo of Tom and Ed Russell made their Coachella debut and a month later, they released their seemingly long overdue debut album, Good Lies . A US and Europe-traversing tour followed, along with a Boiler Room set performed as part of Manchester’s cult-favorite club series, The Warehouse Project.

As each rave wraps, Tom heads back to Devon – a seaside county about two hours from Bath – while Ed retreats to Bristol. The brothers were both living in London, their apartments just minutes away, when Overmono was born in 2015. Tom, who is 10 years Ed’s senior, bought a pair of turntables as a teenager, with his younger brother listening in through the wall. Inspired, Ed got his own pair as a young child and began experimenting with records stolen from his older brother’s room. Tom eventually moved from small-town Monmouth to London, where he released hard techno under the stage name Truss. Ed naturally followed in his footsteps, making bass-heavy rave tracks as the act Tessela.

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Lil Yachty Drops New Single, Visuals For “Let’s Get On Dey Ass”

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Lil Yachty  has officially released his latest song  “Let’s Get On Dey Ass”  along with an accompanying music video. The new track highlights Yachty back in his rap bag at full force, weaving his melodic and whirly auto-tuned vocals over the track’s distorted 808s, howling synth lead, and bouncy hi-hats to deliver a high octane, bass heavy, rap anthem perfect for a festival mosh pit. Directed by  Zhamak , the “Let’s Get On Dey Ass” music video shows Yachty and the Concrete Family dancing around the city, draped in luxurious matching vintage outfits and jewelry. Lofi VHS style shots of Yachty and his crew alternate with clips of the style icon shopping for another signature outfit along with a cameo from social media star and model,  Teanna Trump . The new song comes on the heels of Yachty’s collaborative album with  James Blake ,  Bad Cameo , and follows their most recent visualizer for  “Save The Savior.”

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The 100 Best Album Covers of All Time

From biggie to beyoncé to bad bunny, from nirvana to nas to neil young, this is the album art that changed the way we see music.

PHOTO ILLUSTRATION BY MATTHEW COOLEY

The album is the best invention of the past century, hands down — but the music isn’t the whole story. The album cover has been a cultural obsession as long as albums have. Ever since 12-inch vinyl records took off in the 1950s, packaged in cardboard sleeves, musicians have been fascinated by the art that goes on those covers, and so have fans. When the Beatles revolutionized the game with the cover of Sgt. Pepper , in 1967, it became a way to make a visual statement about where the music comes from and why it matters. But the art of the album cover just keeps evolving.

So this is our massive celebration of that art: the 100 best album covers ever, from Biggie to Beyoncé to Bad Bunny, from Nirvana to Nas to Neil Young, from SZA to Sabbath to the Sex Pistols. We’ve got rap, country, jazz, prog, metal, reggae, flamenco, funk, goth, hippie psychedelia, hardcore punk. But all these albums have a unique look to go with the sound. The most unforgettable covers become part of the music — how many Pink Floyd fans have gotten their minds blown staring at the prism on the cover of Dark Side of the Moon , after using it to roll up their smoking materials?

What makes an album cover a classic? Sometimes it’s a portrait of the artist — think of the Beatles crossing the street, or Carole King in Laurel Canyon with her cat. Others go for iconic, semi-abstract images, like Led Zeppelin, Miles Davis, or My Bloody Valentine. Some artists make a statement about where they’re from, whether it’s R.E.M. repping the South with kudzu or Ol’ Dirty Bastard flashing his food-stamps card to salute the Brooklyn Zoo.

Many of these covers come from legendary photographers, designers, and artists, like Andy Warhol, Annie Leibovitz, Storm Thorgerson, Raymond Pettibon, and Peter Saville. Some have cosmic symbolism for fans to decode; others go for star power. But they’re all classic images that have become a crucial part of music history. And they all show why there’s no end to the world’s long-running love affair with albums.

CONTRIBUTORS: David Browne , Jon Dolan , Suzy Exposito , Andy Greene , Kory Grow , Maya Georgi , Maura Johnston , Gabrielle Macafee , Angie Martoccio , Mosi Reeves , Rob Sheffield , Hank Shteamer , Simon Vozick-Levinson , Alison Weinflash , Christopher Weingarten

From Rolling Stone US

Spinal Tap, ‘Smell the Glove’

There was no easy way to discuss “the issue with the cover” of (totally fictitious heavy-metal band) Spinal Tap’s (nonexistent) 1982 album, Smell the Glove, as recounted in a scene from the mockumentary This Is Spinal Tap: “You put a greased, naked woman on all fours, with a dog collar around her neck and a leash, and a man’s arm extended out up to here holding onto the leash, and pushing a black glove in her face to sniff it,” artist-relations rep Bobbi Flekman (Fran Drescher) says. “You don’t find that offensive?” Well, somebody did, so Spinal Tap ended up with an all-black cover. The band members equivocated it by saying it looked like black leather, a black mirror, death, and mourning. Then Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) got it: “There’s something about this that’s so black, it’s like, ‘How much more black could this be?’ And the answer is, ‘None. None more black.’” The joke manifested itself in real life with Spinal Tap’s soundtrack album, a punk band called None More Black, and “Black Albums” from Metallica, Jay-Z, Prince, the Damned, and many others. Plus, Spinal Tap eventually released their original album cover, albeit toned down a little, years later on the sleeve of their single “Bitch School.” —K.G.

Grateful Dead, ‘Europe 72’

Together or separately, the San Francisco artists Alton Kelley and Stanley Mouse made sure that album art for the Grateful Dead was as trippy (1971’s Grateful Dead) or earthy (Workingman’s Dead) as the music inside. Their visuals for the band’s live triple album are among the simplest in Dead album history. The big, clumsy foot about to stomp on Europe is a witty metaphor for the Dead’s wild-eyed series of shows on that continent, and the “fool” smashing an ice-cream cone into his forehead on the back cover is just goofy Dead fun. (It may also be connected to a tale in drummer Bill Kreutzmann’s memoir about the band dumping some ice cream onto an annoying fan.) Even in the land of the Dead, where visual and musical indulgence could rule, Kelley and Mouse realized that sometimes, less is more. —D.B.

Lil Yachty, ‘Lil Boat’

The cover of Lil Yachty’s debut mixtape, Lil Boat, finds the rapper clad in overalls, standing in a small boat in the middle of the ocean. The collage is framed by a red border printed with the numbers 33.7750° N 84.3900° W — coordinates for the Five Points neighborhood in downtown Atlanta — marking the then-18-year-old rap vocalist as the latest manifestation of the city’s fast-moving and highly influential scene. Mihailo Andic, who designed Lil Boat using a photograph provided by Yachty’s management, drew inspiration from Tumblr. “I thought it’d be a great idea to pitch a cover to his management team: Yachty, on a boat, in the middle of nowhere,” he told Green Label in 2016. “My whole style uses retouching and superimposing photos to make them look as one.” —M.R.

Public Image Ltd, ‘Metal Box’

“We were turned on by the idea that it would be difficult to open the can and get the records out,” Public Image Ltd guitarist Keith Levene told author Simon Reynolds in Rip It Up and Start Again. The post-punk pioneers were already blowing apart rock music with their long, repetitive, often improvisatory songs, and Metal Box rethought the album format itself — three 45 rpm LPs to be treated like 12-inch disco singles, all annoyingly crammed into an unwieldy canister. “With Metal Box, the cover came first, both mentally and physically,” frontman John Lydon told Classic Rock. “We spent most of the advance on it, so making Metal Box presented us with a real challenge because we didn’t have any money left for recording sessions.” —C.W.

Phoebe Bridgers, ‘Punisher’

Phoebe Bridgers’ excellent pandemic-era album has a cover that represents everything we were feeling at the time: fear, loneliness, heartbreak, and the secret wish for extraterrestrials to scoop you up into the sky and get you the hell out of here. Bridgers and photographer Olof Grind took a 24-hour road trip through the California desert, scouting for a location. “I always love a good adventure while shooting, and driving out in a pitch-black desert at 3 a.m. on dirt roads definitely added to my excitement,” Grind said. Bridgers made the skeleton suit her signature look, wearing it on the entire Punisher album cycle and tour. And it’s still impossible not to think of Grind’s image when you listen to songs like the gorgeously devastating “Moon Song” and the strangely romantic “Garden Song.” —A.M.

Offset, ‘Set It Off’

Designed and art-directed by Amber Park, the cover image for Offset’s Set It Off shows the Atlanta rapper tumbling through the sky as the world explodes around him. The image represents modern rap’s shift toward Wagnerian-size drama, with Offset as another kind of heroic survivor, outlasting and overcoming his many controversies. He wears sequined socks and gold gloves, which nod toward his fascination with Thriller-era Michael Jackson. And the image is constructed upside down, making it appear like he’s falling into the sky, not out of it. “I wanted it to be an art piece,” he told Our Generation Music. “It’s like I’m falling down but I’m going up.” —M.R.

Slayer, ‘Reign in Blood’

Just how do you illustrate lyrics like “Raining blood from a lacerated sky/Bleeding its horror, creating my structure/Now, I shall reign in blood”? Slayer producer and label head Rick Rubin turned to political cartoonist Larry Carroll, who tapped into his inner Hieronymus Bosch to create a mixed-media representation of hell with a goatlike deity, decapitated heads, and murderous black angels. “If I remember correctly, [Slayer] didn’t like the cover I did for Reign in Blood at first,” Carroll told Revolver in 2010. “But then someone in the band showed it to their mother, and their mother thought it was disgusting, so they knew they were onto something.” Carroll subsequently created similar hellscapes for Slayer’s South of Heaven, Seasons in the Abyss, and Christ Illusion albums, producing some of the scariest covers in music. —K.G.

Slint, ‘Spiderland’

The members of Slint were just teenagers when they came together in drummer Britt Walford’s Louisville,Kentucky, basement to make the eerily expansive indie rock they’d capture on their epochal 1991 sophomore album, Spiderland. That mix of youthful exuberance and youthful aloneness comes through in the album’s black-and-white cover, which shows them smilingly treading water in a local quarry. The photo was taken by their friend Will Oldham, who’d soon be making his own name with Palace Brothers and Bonnie “Prince” Billy. “We’re just all being youthful and happy,” guitarist Dave Pajo told Rolling Stone’s Hank Shteamer years later, describing the band’s attitude at the time. “When you’re younger, everything is so life-and-death and huge.” —J.D.

Lauryn Hill, ‘The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill’

The wood carving at the center of Lauryn Hill’s only official studio album to date is both inspired by artwork for the Wailers’ 1973 album Burnin’ and by the album title itself. “She already had some great ideas that were inspired by the album title,” Columbia art director Erwin Gorostiza told Okayplayer in 2021. The two developed a plan to arrange a photo shoot at Hill’s alma mater, Columbia High School in Maplewood, New Jersey. After photographer Eric Johnson snapped images of her, they decided to select one of them as source material for an illustration that resembles something made by a wayward, “miseducated” student on a school desk. The result vividly reflects Hill’s rustic melding of hip-hop, R&B, and reggae sounds, and her journey to find clarity in a world riven by relationships and desire. —M.R.

Big Brother and the Holding Company, ‘Cheap Thrills’

Counterculture cartoonist Robert “R.” Crumb drew the cover for the 1967 debut by Big Brother and the Holding Company, a psychedelic comic strip that tells the album’s story in each of its songs. The artist laid down the cover after watching the band from backstage at San Francisco’s Carousel Ballroom: “He really wasn’t into our music, but it didn’t matter,” drummer Dave Getz recalled. It really didn’t: Crumb still captured the wild, woolly spirit of Janis Joplin and her bandmates, even if he’d intended for what became the front cover to serve as its back sleeve. —M.J.

Ani DiFranco, ‘Up Up Up Up Up Up’

Modern folk-music icon Ani DiFranco built her enduring success on a mix of anti-capitalist commitment, aesthetic ingenuity, DIY community, and her electric charisma. You can see all of those elements in the multidimensional cover image for her 1999 album. It’s a statement of playful substance over predictable image, but even with her face pointed to the ground she still completely commands your attention. The cover photo was taken by her friend and longtime manager Scot Fisher, who helped DiFranco found the Buffalo, New York-based label Righteous Babe. “We were a mom-and-pop operation,” she recalled in a 2016 interview. “Scot was the photographer and the dude who answered the phone, and I was the graphic designer who would paint the album covers.” —J.D. 

Silkk the Shocker, ‘Charge It 2 Da Game’

The garish, maximalist, larger-than-life album covers of Pen & Pixel defined the late-Nineties CD era, when Southern rap labels like No Limit, Cash Money, and Suave House began to topple the East Coast/West Coast monopoly. Brothers Aaron and Shawn Brauch covered hundreds of album covers with their Photoshop wonderlands of luxury cars, sparkling gems, and bottles of champagne. The cover of Silkk the Shocker’s second album — jeweled lettering, gleaming pinky ring, skewed perspective, gold “Ghetto Express” card — is a classic of the form. “The longer you hold that CD cover in your hand, the more possession-oriented you become,” Shawn told Red Bull. “People would comment later, ‘Yeah, man, the album wack, but the artwork was cool.’ I was like, ‘Well, that’s my job done, right?’” —C.W.

Neil Young, ‘On the Beach’

“Album covers are very important to me,” Neil Young wrote in his 2012 memoir, Waging Heavy Peace. “They put a face on the nature of the project.” This is especially true of 1974’s On the Beach, Young’s devastating rumination on Watergate, the recent breakup of his marriage, his recent albums’ commercial failure, and the overall dissolution of the Sixties dream. It’s all evident on the cover, where he’s seen standing on the Santa Monica shore, his back turned away from the camera. The tail light of a 1959 Cadillac emerges from the sand, surrounded by gaudy yellow patio furniture. The headline from a local L.A. paper reads “Sen. Buckley Calls for Nixon to Resign.” Young spontaneously purchased the items with art director Gary Burden while stoned on “dynamite” weed. —A.M.

Devo, ‘Q: Are We Not Men? A: We Are Devo!’

“What we focused on was inane, mundane, dumb, mass stuff,” said Devo’s Gerald Casale to NBC. “We liked to go to Kmart and Gold Circle because it had all this discount stuff. That’s when I found, in an aisle of discontinued sports goods, the Chi Chi Rodriguez golf-ball package.” For its debut, the band wanted to use the image of the flamboyant golfer they found on a $1.99 box of balls; however, Warner Bros. lawyers intervened. They quickly found a composite photo of four U.S. presidents that Devo’s Mark Mothersbaugh called “perfectly hideous” and had it airbrushed onto Rodriguez’s face. —C.W.

Frank Ocean, ‘Blonde’

The now-iconic photograph of Frank Ocean in the shower as he cups his hand over his face, his hair dyed in lime green, was the result of a lengthy 2015 collaboration between him and German photographer Wolfgang Tillmans. The image plays to both men’s interest in otherness, not only as a sign of queer identity, but also as a method of presenting a distinctly iconoclastic yet public self. Ocean and Tillmans were brought together for a photo shoot by the fashion magazine Fantastic Man. Blonde introduced Tillmans, who had been documenting underground culture since the Eighties, to a new generation. It also introduced a defining image of the singer, one both invitingly mysterious and alluringly unknowable. —M.R.

Minor Threat, ‘Minor Threat’

Minor Threat epitomized American hardcore punk at its most fiercely independent. You see that spirit in the classic image of singer Ian MacKaye’s brother Alec sleeping on the steps of Dischord House, where so many of the D.C. punk kids lived and where the band ran their label. Alec’s shaved head, his scuffed work boots, his rumpled clothes, his folded arms, his punked-out exhaustion — it summed up the whole ethos of Minor Threat. The image has been a symbol of DIY realness ever since, inspiring many tributes, most famously the cover of Rancid’s 1995 …And Out Come the Wolves. No wonder corporate America wanted a piece — Nike tried to appropriate it for their bizarre 2005 “Major Threat” ad campaign, until public outrage shut it down. —R.S.

Jay-Z, ‘The Blueprint’

For The Blueprint, Jay-Z turned to Jonathan Mannion, a photographer who had shot all of Jay’s covers since his 1996 debut, Reasonable Doubt. Mannion took inspiration from Jocelyn Bain Hogg, a British photographer who snapped South London gangster Dave Courtney giving a lecture at Oxford Union, for his book The Firm. Mannion’s shot replicates the aerial framing, finding Jay-Z looking away from the camera, holding court over a group of minions only identified by their shoes. Designer Jason Noto of Def Jam’s in-house creative department the Drawing Board cast the entire image in faded blues and grays. In 2021, Jay sued Mannion over prints the photographer sold from their many sessions. The two settled out of court in 2023. —M.R.

Taylor Swift, ‘Folklore’

Taylor Swift stepped back from her songs on her eighth album: “I found myself not only writing my own stories, but also writing about or from the perspective of people I’ve never met, people I’ve known, or those I wish I hadn’t,” she posted upon Folklore’s release in 2020. Its striking monochromatic cover — a departure from the candy-coated Lover front, and the first collaboration between Swift and photographer Beth Garrabrant — is similarly situated in the wide world, with the coat-clad singer seeming tiny amid mist-cloaked trees and mossy terrain, gazing upward with a pondering expression. —M.J.   

Shakira, ‘Dónde Están los Ladrones?’

After wrapping up her 1997 Pies Descalzos Tour, Shakira landed in Bogotá, Columbia, to discover her briefcase had been stolen … and in it, the songs she’d written for her next album. She’d decidedly named her 1998 record “Dónde Están los Ladrones?” or “Where Are the Thieves?” — and conceptualized the theft as an allegory for thefts of all kinds, including that of Columbia by corrupt politicians, drug lords, and paramilitaries, during what’s since been described as the “Dirty Wars.” Shot against a statement hot pink, Shakira posed for her album cover donning edgy purple braids, with extended dirt-covered palms. “The dirty hands represent the shared guilt,” she said of her cover. “No one is completely clean.… In the end, we are all accomplices.” —S.E.

King Crimson, ‘In the Court of the Crimson King’

King Crimson knew they were onto something big when they pieced together “21st Century Schizoid Man,” the snarling, sweeping portrait of an unraveling collective consciousness that would open their 1969 debut LP. And when artist Barry Godber dropped by London’s Wessex Studios to show them the cover painting that lyricist Peter Sinfield had commissioned, they knew they’d found the perfect visual counterpart. “This fucking face screamed up from the floor, and what it said to us was ‘schizoid man’ — the very track we’d been working on,” bassist-vocalist Greg Lake later recalled. Pairing the image with lyrics like “Blood rack, barbed wire/Politicians’ funeral pyre/Innocents raped with napalm fire,” it’s hardly a leap to imagine the cover figure looking on in horror at the atrocities the song describes. —H.S.

Weyes Blood, ‘Titanic Rising’

On the cover of Titanic Rising, Natalie Mering — the California singer-songwriter who records as Weyes Blood — appears inside an eerie deep-sea installation, hovering between a brass bed and a white wicker desk, with posters adorning the walls. The image perfectly captures the themes of Titanic Rising: millennial doom, the climate crisis, the isolation of technology, and water itself. “This bullshit initiation into culture — for most young people in the Westernized world, it’s their bedroom,” she told Rolling Stone. “They hang up posters of their favorite celebrities and their favorite movies, and they formulate these ideas about life and what life should be like, and what they want. And it’s all an incubation of capitalist bullshit. But it’s still very sacred.” —A.M.

Lil Wayne, ‘Tha Carter III’

“I’m going to be so honest with you: I don’t know Tha Carter III, Tha Carter II, Tha Carter One from Tha Carter IV. And that’s just my God’s honest truth,” Lil Wayne told RS last year. “I believe that [God] blessed me with this amazing mind, but would not give [me] an amazing memory to remember this amazing shit.” Fair enough. But the cover of Tha Carter III, Wayne’s best album, is unforgettable. Rappers have made iconic album artwork using baby photos before — think Ready to Die, Illmatic — but Wayne took it a step further, giving Baby Weezy a diamond pinky ring and some facial ink, for an image that summed up the unstoppable, no-fucks-given charm that made him a superstar. “We wanted to bring something new to it,” art director Scott Sandler said. “What if we put the tats on the baby?” —A.M.

New York Dolls, ‘New York Dolls’

Rolling Stone’s review of the New York Dolls’ 1973 self-titled debut refers to the punk pioneers as “mutant children of the hydrogen age.” This comes across perfectly on the album cover, which shows the androgynous quartet slumped together on a couch, slathered in makeup and hairspray. It was created by Vogue photographer Toshi Matsuo after the Dolls nixed a plan by their label to shoot them near vintage dolls in an antique shop, sans makeup. “That couch we were sitting on, we found that on the street and brought it up,” said guitarist Sylvain Sylvain. “We put the white fabric on it — I remember tacking it on.” The look was so ahead of its time that imitators wouldn’t come along until hair metal arrived a decade later. —A.G.

The Smiths, ‘The Queen Is Dead’

Throughout the Smiths’ feverishly productive run in the mid-Eighties, lead singer Morrissey selected photo stills depicting midcentury movies and pop-culture moments for their singles and albums. His pick for the Smith’s third album, The Queen Is Dead, may be their most iconic: an image of French superstar Alain Delon in the film L’Insoumis, lying in distress. The concept of this beautifully handsome yet controversially macho star — the Brad Pitt of the Sixties — as a “queen” nods toward Morrissey’s subversive sense of humor. The layout, handled by Rough Trade’s Caryn Gough, casts the photo in shades of dark green, making Delon appear as a doomed royal in their death throes. —M.R.

Tyler, the Creator, ‘Igor’

The cover for Tyler, the Creator’s fifth solo album is striking in its minimalism: a pained close-up of the California-born polymath combined with a typewriter-font assertion that he was responsible for all the album’s sonics, and a salmon backdrop that feels aggressive despite its pastel hue. Igor further established Tyler as an artist willing to push himself into new realms, and the cover announces that to anyone flipping through a collection. “We work well together because I believe in what he wants to create,” photographer Luis “Pancho” Perez, who worked with Tyler to create the cover, told Complex in 2019. “Nothing has really changed his confidence in himself.” —M.J.

Radiohead, ‘Kid A’

At the close of the 20th century, Radiohead were an acclaimed British rock band desperate to be anything else. That jittery unease fueled the artwork that Thom Yorke created with his old friend Stanley Donwood, riffing on ancient mythology and paranoid dreams in late-night sessions. “There was an air of chaos suddenly, and that was really fun,” Yorke told Rolling Stone years later. The cover they chose for Kid A has all the unsettling intensity of the music Yorke was making with his bandmates: an icy, forbidding mountain range, like something out of a digital nightmare. “It was almost a dark fairyland,” Donwood said. “A very lonely, cold, and quiet place, apart from the punctuations of terrible war.” —S.V.L.

Blur, ‘Parklife’

Designers Rob O’Connor and Chris Thompson took to London’s streets for inspiration as they were brainstorming a cover for what would go on to be Blur’s era-defining 1994 album. While peering in the window of a betting lounge for sports-related ideas, they found a concept that had bite: “We centered in on the greyhounds,” Blur guitarist Graham Coxon told Brit-pop chronicler Dylan Jones in 2022’s Faster Than a Cannonball, “because they had an aggressiveness we liked. We chose the ones with the most teeth. They look deranged, just longing to kill, and there’s a bizarre look in their faces. You just don’t get that look with a footballer — well, maybe a little bit.” The image of racing dogs underscored the hunger of the best Brit-pop, and set Blur apart from their more glam-minded peers. —M.J.

Willie Nelson, ‘Red Headed Stranger’

On his legendary 1975 opus, Red Headed Stranger, Willie Nelson tells the tale of a preacher on the run after killing his own child and unfaithful wife. Nelson stepped into the role of an outlaw on the cover (designed by Monica White), which showed his unruly image framed in the style of a ‘Wanted’ poster. Red Headed Stranger was country music’s first concept album, a watershed for the outlaw-country movement that included Waylon Jennings and Kris Kristofferson, and its cover went a long way toward creating the subgenre’s rough-hewn iconography.  —G.M.

Billie Eilish, ‘When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go?’

Just like the music, the cover of Bille Eilish’s classic debut drops you right into her creepy-crawly teenage nightmares. Photographer Kenneth Cappello collaborated with Eilish on a 12-hour shoot, ending up with a deeply unsettling shot of Eilish sitting on bed, her eyes entirely white, pupils obscured. Eilish brought in sketches of her inspirations for the cover, which included the Babadook. (“I got so much inspiration from The Babadook,” she told Rolling Stone in 2019.) “She’s all in,” Cappello told MTV News. “Those wide eyes? Those aren’t in post, those are contacts. She goes all in on everything.”

FKA Twigs, ‘LP1’

The hauntingly plastic visage of British musician FKA Twigs dominates the cover of LP1, a bizarre representation of her disturbingly mutant electronic pop. It was constructed by Jesse Kanda, who met her via his longtime friend and collaborator Arca. “We did the front cover for her album in my room, with my shitty lights, and no people running around. I have the most control when I do everything myself,” he told Dazed in 2014. He sculpted a photograph of her using 3D technology, manipulating and warping the image, then painted over the results. Longtime XL Recordings art director Phil Lee and Twigs collaborated on the aquamarine blue design that spotlighted Kanda’s imagery. In 2015, the cover earned a Grammy nomination for Best Recording Package. —M.R.

Grace Jones, ‘Nightclubbing’

The famous Nightclubbing photo of Grace Jones dressed in an Armani suit, a cigarette dangling from her lips, was the culmination of a tempestuous personal and professional relationship between her and photographer Jean-Paul Goude. The image seemed as much a cheeky New Wave commentary on corporate Eighties style as an exercise in gender-bending fashion. But despite observers’ claims (and criticism) of how Goude crafted and manipulated her image, Jones has always asserted that she was in control of the process. “Jean-Paul would say, later…that he had created me,” she wrote in her 2015 autobiography, I’ll Never Write My Memoirs. “I knew that wasn’t the case, that I was creating myself before I met him.”–M.R.

R.E.M., ‘Murmur’

Lots of Southern bands had used pastoral imagery on their album covers to underscore their music’s down-home difference. R.E.M. flipped the script with the cover of their debut, Murmur. The front image shows a goth-y woods overrun by kudzu — a weed that grows so fast it covers and kills any plant in its way. The back image is of a disused train trestle near the band’s hometown of Athens, Georgia. Taken together, it was a perfect reflection of the band’s mysterious, enveloping sound. The “Murmur Trestle” immediately became part of local lore, defended by R.E.M. fans when it was approved for demolition in 2019. “Why do they need to preserve it?” said photographer Sandra-Lee Phipps, who took both photos. “It was just done randomly. Somehow it ended up mattering to people.” —J.D.

Van Halen, ‘1984’

When Warner Bros. designer Margo Nahas heard Van Halen’s original concept for the cover of their sixth LP — four dancing women made out of chrome — she quickly passed. (Already a seasoned illustrator of chrome, she “couldn’t imagine doing all the reflections,” she later said.) But when her husband, fellow designer Jay Vigon, brought her portfolio to the band, they were instantly drawn to her now-iconic painting of an angelic baby grinning and holding a smoke, which she’d modeled off a friend’s son. “I took a picture of him, took him candy cigarettes, which he proceeded to eat, every single one, after a brief tantrum, of course,” Nahas recalled in 2020. The impish yet innocent image encapsulated the lovable mischief of the band’s “Hot for Teacher” era. —H.S.

Lorde, ‘Melodrama’

For her highly-anticipated sophomore album, Lorde crafted a delicate cover that evoked Melodrama’s emotional heft. Painted by the Brooklyn artist Sam McKinnis — whom Lorde connected with via a fangirling email — and inspired by an image that McKinnis had made riffing on the cover of Prince’s Purple Rain, the cover is based on a photograph McKinnis took of Lorde as she lay in bed. Drenched in the shadows of a moody, electric blue that could swatch a dance floor or the walls of a club bathroom, with warm cracks of daybreak creeping on Lorde’s cheek, the image depicts her in the morning after a night of dancing with “all the heartache and treason” she sang about on the album. —M.G.

Marvin Gaye, ‘Here, My Dear’

There are breakup albums, and then there’s Here, My Dear, Marvin Gaye’s brutally honest unpacking of his in-progress divorce from his first wife, Anna Gordy. The serene front cover shows Gaye depicted as a Roman statue, standing in front of a lavish temple — its cornerstone bearing the inscription “Love and Marriage” — next to a sculpture of embracing lovers. But by the time you see the back-cover image, the sculpture and the temple have caught fire and are actively crumbling, and the inscription on the building now reads “Pain and Divorce.” If all that weren’t bleak enough, on the inner sleeve, we see a couple’s hands engaged in a Monopoly-like board game, with all their earthly possessions at stake between them, and the scales of justice looming ominously in the background. —H.S.

DJ Shadow, ‘Endtroducing’

DJ Shadow’s 1996 debut LP was constructed almost entirely out of samples, a love letter to funky, crackly old vinyl that was released into a world where most record stores only sold CDs. The cover image shows two of Shadow’s buddies from the Bay Area hip-hop label SoulSides, producer Chief Xcel and rapper Lyrics Born, going through the stacks at Records, a local institution (now closed) that billed itself as “a speciality shop dealing in out-of-print phonograph records.” As Shadow said of the store in the documentary Scratch, “Just being in here is a humbling experience because you’re looking through all these records, and it’s sort of like a big pile of broken dreams, in a way.” —J.D.

Sonny Rollins, ‘Way Out West’

“I was really living out my Lone Ranger thing,” Sonny Rollins said in 2009, reflecting on his Western-themed classic Way Out West. He wanted a cover that evoked the Westerns he grew up on, so photographer William Claxton suggested they pick up a ten-gallon hat, a holster, and a steer’s skull and head to the Mojave Desert, where he shot Rollins holding his saxophone and staring down the camera like a hardened cowboy. Some were critical of what they saw as the photo’s hokey premise and incorrectly assumed that Rollins was pressured into it. “Many people thought wrongly over the years that I was asked to pose that way or that the material was forced on me, because California was thought to be a movie place and a commercial place,” he said. “Not true. I was given complete control.” —H.S.

Janet Jackson, ‘The Velvet Rope’

With its themes of self-care, depression, and the then-taboo exploration of Black female queerness, The Velvet Rope may be Janet Jackson’s most intimate full-length work. Ironically, its cover depicts her clothed, not topless as on the Patrick Demarchelier-photographed shot on her previous album, 1993’s Janet. Photographer Ellen von Unwerth captured Jackson dressed in a black turtleneck with her head pointed downward. Meanwhile, the deep-red background tipped her audience to the burning emotions inside Jackson, as if she’s struggling to get it all out. (The interior photographs, shot by von Unwerth and Mario Testino, are more risqué.) “You know people they still ask me about it,” said von Unwerth of the enigmatic cover. “It became more iconic in a way.” —M.R.

My Bloody Valentine, ‘Loveless’

Swoosh-y abstraction was a go-to look for turn-of-the-Nineties shoegaze bands like Ride, Slowdive, and Swervedriver. But those bands usually worked in moody blues and grays. My Bloody Valentine’s choice of hot pink (a color you were more likely to see on a Poison record) for the cover of their 1990 masterpiece Loveless grabbed your eye with a look as undeniably loud as the band’s stomach-rattling guitar swells. MBV mastermind Kevin Shields and visual artist Angus Cameron collaborated on the image, taking a screengrab of Shields’ hands on his guitar from the band’s Cameron-directed “Too Shallow” video and turning it into a blur of radiant abstraction. —J.D.

Beastie Boys, ‘Licensed to Ill’

The cover of the Beastie Boys’ debut is as brash and playfully referential as the Beasties’ sound. Producer Rick Rubin got the idea for the cover — a Boeing 727 with a Beastie Boys logo and a tail number that, viewed in the mirror, says “eat me” — while reading through the Led Zeppelin bio Hammer of the Gods and spying a photo of the band’s private jet. “I wanted to embrace and somehow distinguish,” he said in the book 100 Best Album Covers, “in a sarcastic way, the larger than life rock & roll lifestyle.” Artists Stephen Byram and World B. Omes crafted the gatefold cover with a surprise in mind — at first it looks almost majestic, but when seen in full, the plane is revealed to have crashed, its front end crumpled. The resulting image provides another layer of irony: The plane, many have noted, looks like a joint smashed in an ashtray.

Joni Mitchell, ‘Hejira’

Joni Mitchell wrote Hejira while traveling cross-country, so she could have slapped a photo of an open road on the cover and called it a day. Instead, it was only the beginning. The sleek road sits inside a black-and-white Norman Seeff portrait of Mitchell, “haunted, like a Bergman figure,” wearing a beret and holding a cigarette. Around 14 photos were used for the cover and sleeves — including figure skater Toller Cranston out on the ice, to complete the wintry vibe — and an airbrush was used to make the images on the cover look like one cohesive illustration. The effort paid off, creating a beautifully intricate album cover to represent delicate tracks like “Amelia” and “Song for Sharon.” Looking back, Mitchell said it’s her favorite cover of hers: “A lot of work went into that.” —A.M.

Sonic Youth, ‘Goo’

Sonic Youth’s long run as the official band of America’s avant-garde art scene means that their catalog is full of iconic images, like Daydream Nation’s Gerhard Richter candle painting and Dirty’s Mike Kelley rag doll. But none are as enduring as the black-and-white sketch that SoCal punk legend Raymond Pettibon contributed to Goo. The pair of impossibly cool young sociopaths and their neo-noir tale of sex and death have been endlessly memed since then, but back in 1990, they made execs at the band’s new major-label home nervous — which was kind of the point. “That was so important at the time,” Lee Ranaldo later told biographer David Browne. “In a way, we were still in that world … that our ‘scene’ was making.” —S.V.L.

Rosalía, ‘El Mal Querer’

Rosalía tapped a longtime internet friend, the Spanish Croatian artist Filip Ćustić, to conceive what he’s described as a “visual universe” for her 2018 flamenco-pop masterwork, El Mal Querer. The two chatted over Whatsapp to devise an image for each track that would “update Spanish imagery to the 21st century.” In consistency with the record’s theme, Ćustić depicts Rosalía as an ethereal queen of the seraphs, a symbol of the divine feminine, liberated from the tyranny of a controlling man. “She emerges naked from the heavens, as if she were a goddess more than a virgin, saying, ‘This is me, and this has been my learning process,’” explained Ćustić in Spanish newspaper El Pais. —S.E.

Lana Del Rey, ‘Norman Fucking Rockwell’

On the cover of her sixth album, Lana Del Rey seems to be pulling us into her world of deconstructed American myths, as she clings to the Kennedy-esque figure of Jack Nicholson’s grandson Duke Nicholson. From its oil-painted blue sky to Del Rey’s bright-green nylon jacket, the image’s retro-modern feel perfectly reflects the way the music inside offers her own 2010s vision of fading Laurel Canyon glory. The cover photo was taken by Del Rey’s sister, Caroline “Chuck” Grant, who has collaborated with the singer on a number of music videos and photo shoots (including a 2023 cover of Rolling Stone UK). “She captures what I consider to be the visual equivalent of what I do sonically,” Del Rey said in a 2014 interview. —G.M.

T. Rex, ‘Electric Warrior’

Few rock sleeves feel as purposefully barren as the Electric Warrior cover, which finds glam god Marc Bolan suspended, along with his guitar and amp, in what might as well be an interstellar void. Using a live-image shot by Kieron Murphy, Hipgnosis designers Storm Thorgerson and Aubrey Powell added a striking gold halo that helped turn Bolan into a visual icon at precisely the point when he was completing his metamorphosis from flower-child folkie to consummate rock & roll dandy. “Black and gold, the metal guru in full force,” Beck once wrote of one of his favorite album-art specimens. “This is what we want a rock cover to look like.” —H.S.

A Tribe Called Quest, ‘The Low End Theory’

The cover of A Tribe Called Quest’s second album features an unnamed model photographed by Joe Grant. She’s kneeling in black shadows, her body covered in green and red paint. It’s partly inspired by Ohio Players’ memorable 1970s run of covers that depicted women in freaky and suggestive positions. “I wanted a white background for the shot, but they flipped it and made it black,” said group leader Q-Tip in the 2005 book Rakim Told Me. All of the Low End Theory’s visual elements, from the woman in body paint to the red-black-green color scheme reminiscent of the Pan-African flag, became defining elements for Tribe moving forward, and a signature for their deep-rooted and jazz-inflected bohemian sound. —M.R.

Björk, ‘Homogenic’

The making of Homogenic was a fraught time for Björk, as she adjusted to a new level of global fame and the suicide of Ricardo López, a disturbed fan who mailed a letter bomb to her London home. After spotting a striking fashion photo created by photographer Nick Knight and designer Alexander McQueen, she enlisted them to sum up the various emotional currents in her life in an arresting hyperreal portrait. The blend of cultural elements — a Japanese kimono, a European manicure, Maasai neck rings, and a Hopi “butterfly whorl” hairstyle — reflected Björk’s perception of herself as a global citizen. As she later said: “We were trying to make this person that was under a lot of restraint, like long manicure, neckpiece, headpiece, contact lenses — still trying to keep the strength.” —H.S.

Judas Priest, ‘British Steel’

Judas Priest guitarist Glenn Tipton put in his time at the British Steel Corporation, working for the steel producer for five years before his band — who produce a different kind of heavy metal — decided to name their sixth album, British Steel. The title clicked with art director Rosław Szaybo and photographer Bob Elsdale, who created a giant razor blade out of aluminum with the band’s logo on it. Szaybo volunteered to hold it for the shot. “A lot of people looked at it and were really quite horrified,” Elsdale told Revolver. “The edges of the blade seemed to be cutting into Rosław’s flesh, because he was really gripping it quite hard. But that wasn’t the case — it actually had blunt edges. It wasn’t bloody, but it had an element of drama.” —K.G.

Sleater-Kinney, ‘The Hot Rock’

“It’s a labyrinthine record,” Carrie Brownstein wrote of Sleater-Kinney’s fourth LP, The Hot Rock, in her memoir, “sad, fractious, not a victory lap, but speaking to uncertainty.” Following up on their 1997 breakthrough, Dig Me Out, Brownstein, Corin Tucker, and Janet Weiss were working through interpersonal struggles while facing more scrutiny than ever before. The cover photo by Marina Chavez, showing the band standing on a Portland, Oregon, street corner, captures that heavy energy: Tucker and Weiss each stare toward the curb, the drummer looking almost trepidatious, while Brownstein holds up her hand, hailing a cab, her face bearing a disgruntled expression. Like the jewel thieves in the 1972 heist film that gave the album its name, the trio had no choice but to get a move on and meet their moment. —H.S.

David Bowie, ‘Diamond Dogs’

David Bowie closed out his glam era with the decadent apocalyptic excess of Diamond Dogs, a concept album set in a crumbling America of the future. “When we got to Diamond Dogs,” he later said, “that was when it was out of control.” The deranged spirit extended to its cover, designed by Belgian artist Guy Peellaert, which depicted Bowie as a grotesque half-man/half-dog, including genitals on his twisted body. Bowie’s pose on the cover was inspired by a 1926 photo of singer Josephine Baker. Just as the album was ready to get shipped to retailers, Bowie’s record label pulled the cover and had it airbrushed into something less offensive. Some copies did make it out, and Diamond Dogs remains the most provocative album cover of Bowie’s career. —G.M.

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